advice, thoughts, and discussion

What is VBS?

by trinityfamilyministries on May 3, 2012

It’s that time again…time for VBS planning and training. With all of the cool new curriculum and excitement of creating the perfect and most widely visited VBS, we lose sight of what Vacation Bible School really is. What is VBS? Why do we do VBS? What value does it add to our church and community? Who are we trying to reach?

Vacation Bible School (VBS) is a specialized form of religious education which focuses on children. Churches usually hold the week-long events during the summer, though the lengths of such programs may vary, and they are sometimes held during other times of the year…Basically- VBS is a time that the church gets together to help kids learn about Jesus and build relationships with other people in the church who can guide them and help them grow spiritually.

We do VBS for one main reason – to tell kids about Jesus. George Barna (a well-respected Christian group on statistics) found that “nearly half of all Americans who accept Jesus Christ as their savior do so before reaching the age of 13 (43%), and that two out of three born again Christians (64%) made that commitment to Christ before their 18th birthday. One out of eight born again people (13%) made their profession of faith while 18 to 21 years old. Less than one out of every four born again Christians (23%) embraced Christ after their twenty-first birthday. Barna noted that these figures are consistent with similar studies it has conducted during the past twenty years.” Whoa! This means that helping kids to learn about Jesus is really important.

So, what value does VBS add and who are we trying to reach? We obviously want to reach people in our communities…that’s what churches are Called to do! But, how many of our churches actually do that? Do you go to the church closest to you, or do you drive 15-20 minutes to get to church? With VBS, we can connect with kids in our community, and then help reach their parents, too! By doing that, we are connecting families from the community and creating relationships with them that could be life changing.

We have some really cool new things that we will be exploring with VBS this year. Pastor Mike and I will be making some announcements that should get you really excited and pumped up for this summer!